93. Flood Legends
This situation applies to many widely spread concepts in folk-lore. Flood myths of some sort, for instance, are told by probably the majority of human nations. In the early days of the science, this wide distribution of flood myths was held to prove the actuality of a flood, or to be evidence of the descent of all mankind from a single nation which had once really experienced it. Such explanations are too obviously naïve to require refutation to-day. Yet it is difficult to interpret the wide prevalence of flood myths, either as spontaneous growth from out the human mind, or as diffusion from a single devising of the idea. Much of the difficulty is caused by the fact that one cannot be sure that the various flood myths are identical. Some peoples have the flood come after the earth is formed and inhabited, and have it almost destroy the human race. Other nations begin their cosmology with a flood. For them, water was in existence before there was an earth, and the problem for the gods or creative animals was to make the world. This, according to some American Indian versions, they finally accomplished by having one of their number dive to the bottom and bring up a few grains of sand which were then expanded to constitute terra firma. The first type of story is evidently a true “flood” myth; the second might better be described as a concept of “primeval water.” The difficulty is enhanced by the fact that the two types are sometimes found amalgamated in a single mythology. Thus the Hebrew account begins with the primeval waters but subsequent to the formation of the earth the deluge covers it. So, according to some American tribes, the flood came after the earth, but the waters remained until after the diving. It is clear that flood stories are more shifting than the Magic Flight episode. They may conceivably all be variations of a single theme which has gradually come to differentiate greatly. But again, several distinct concepts—primeval water, flood, the diving animals, the ark—may have been evolved in different parts of the world, each developing in its own way, and traveling so far, in some cases, as to meet and blend with others. This last interpretation is favored by some of the facts of distribution: the prevalence of the diving concept in America, for instance, and the absence of flood myths from much of Africa.
Fig. 27. The Magic Flight tale, an example of inter-continental and inter-hemispheric diffusion. After Stucken, with additions.
There is a vast amount of folk-lore recorded, and much of it has lent itself admirably to the working out of its historical origins, so far as limited regions are concerned. Folk-lorists are often able to prove that one tale originated in India and was carried into mediæval Europe, or that another was probably first devised on the coast of British Columbia and then disseminated across the Rocky mountains to the interior tribes of Indians. When it comes to intercontinental and world-wide distribution, however, difficulties of the sort just set forth in regard to flood myths become stronger and stronger. While the most interesting mythical ideas are those which are world-wide, it is in these that uncertainty between origin by diffusion or parallelism is greatest. The Magic Flight therefore constitutes a grateful exception. It opens the door to a hope that more assiduous analysis and comparison may lead to the accurate determination of the source and history of other common and fundamental myths.